This coming Saturday the monthly meeting will be in our ‘winter quarters’ at Herne Mill, starting at 2.30 pm. As this is also the time of year when we hold our AGM, the meeting will be in two parts. The AGM itself will start at 2.30 (papers will be available on the day) and will probably last for about 45 minutes. You will see from the papers that we will be asking members and friends for suggestions relating to spending some of the branch funds in the coming year, so please come prepared to contribute ideas.

Following that, and with some refreshments to hand, we will have a session on ‘Equipment you don’t need’. For this, we would like all active beekeeping members of the branch to bring along (if possible) an item of equipment that they’ve bought/acquired at some stage in their time as a beekeeper but then found that it either wasn’t necessary or didn’t work as anticipated. It is recognised that everyone has different ways of working with their bees but we hope that this session will draw out some interesting and useful pointers for our beginners and novices (as well as causing nods of agreement – or disagreement – from fellow beekeepers). We expect the meeting as a whole will finish around 4.30.

Please note that parking space inside the Mill’s grounds is fairly limited, so if you arrive just before the start of the meeting it’s usually a good idea to park in the side road next to the Mill.

Back in July, during the very hot period a couple of weeks ago, the Boughton golf course found that they had some inappropriate guests in the wall of one of their sheds, behind the cladding. They contacted the branch to see if we could remove them to a safe place. This club seems to be a magnet for swarms and feral colonies as we’ve had similar call-outs for the last couple of years.

Anyway, despite the tropical temperatures, some stalwarts from the branch went along and got kitted-up, and carried out what is technically known as ‘a cut-out’ from the wall of the building. It was a nice little colony that obviously hadn’t been there very long, going on the colour of the comb and the small space they were occupying. The bees have been put safely into a nuc and the beekeepers are now recovered from their exertions.

Surveying the scene and getting ready to remove the wall cladding

A nice small colony, that will do better in a proper home and away from the developing wasp nest in the adjacent section!

The amount of stores in the front comb is quite impressive, given the short time they’d been there.

The branch will have a stall at both the Whitstable ‘Funday Sunday’ on 10th June and also the Faversham Garden Market on 24th June. We will have some local honey for sale as well as beeswax, but our main reason for taking part in each event is to talk with people about honey bees, and other bees, and help with identification of honey/bumble/solitary bees, or plants that are particularly suitable if you want to support bees and other pollinators. We will also have details of how to become a beekeeper, and will be selling ‘Bee Experience Day’ vouchers for anyone who’s stuck for a present for a nearby friend or relative.

I have two colonies that I want to unite at the moment. Both need the late summer varroa treatment. How soon after uniting them is it safe to start treating them with Apiguard? I wouldn’t want the smell of the treatment to disrupt the chosen queen’s hold over her newly extended colony.

Auntie Bee answers:

Now is an ideal time to unite colonies and it is essential to have strong colonies going into winter. As colonies have their own unique odour they will fight unless united slowly with time to get used to each other. There are a number of methods for uniting colonies but the newspaper method is easy and reliable.

Firstly a few tips about uniting. If you have two colonies to unite – your records should tell you which has the better/younger queen and the other queen should be culled. Don’t unite and leave both queens to fight it out on the principle of survival of the fittest, the victorious queen may well be damaged in the punch up and then you will have no queen for the following season.

How to unite, This is best done late afternoon when foragers have returned to the hive.

Remove supers from both colonies and place a sheet of newspaper over the brood box in the position that the final colony will occupy. Secure this with a queen excluder and make a few small holes in the paper to allow the odour of both colonies to permeate. Place the brood box from the second colony on top and close the hive. If you want to put back a super with stores a further queen excluder and newspaper sheet are required.

Most text books say it is preferable to unite with the queen in the bottom brood box but I think this is not important. As you have a queen excluder in between the brood boxes you will know where she is and you can reverse or amalgamate the boxes later on. Don’t over winter with the queen excluder in place though, if you chose to leave the bees on a double brood.

And the answer to the question. After a week, inspect the colony and if a good proportion of the newspaper is gone and the bees are moving freely between the boxes, I would tidy away any remaining paper and check that the queen is laying. You will need to see eggs or very young larvae to ensure that she is laying well. Then reverse the boxes if necessary so the queen is in the bottom box or amalgamate frames into one box if colonies were both small to start with. I would then leave everything for a further week before doing the varroa treatment. Bees are susceptible to stress and I like to do only one manipulation at a time and give them time to recover in between.

Final noteVarroa treatment should be done before feeding as most treatments are temperature dependent.

A one-day event for members of the public who would like to know more about honey bees and beekeeping, either to see if they might wish to become beekeepers themselves or simply to learn a little about such a fascinating activity. To be held at the branch’s training apiary on the University of Kent campus at Canterbury.

We will start the day at 10.30 in the potting shed/training room where the W&HB branch Education Officer, Julie Coleman, will give a couple of hours instruction on the theory of modern beekeeping, together with some practical tips. This will be interspersed with some hands on practical work and plenty of tea and coffee. At 12.30 we will break for lunch: we can provide tea, coffee, cold drinks, and biscuits. but please bring a packed lunch.

After lunch, about 1.30 we will suit up in protective clothing provided and go into the apiary to look at the hives. You will be required to bring wellingtons or similar – something the suit can tuck into so there are no gaps, and marigold type washing up gloves. A long sleeve shirt may also be advised as bees can occasionally sting through suits. There will be several experienced beekeepers on hand so we can split into small groups where we can demonstrate handling bees and you can have a go if you wish.

We will then retire back to the shed where you can enjoy a hard earned cuppa and we can answer any questions and discuss the way forward if you decide beekeeping may be of interest to you. We should finish by 4.00 depending on how the day goes and the number of questions we have along the way. Beekeeping is a complex and fascinating pastime and there are always more questions than answers and always at least three answers to any question.

We have decided to levy a £10 fee for this event, payable on the day. If you wish, we can use this for you to become a Friend of the branch when memberships renew at the end of September. You will receive newsletters detailing monthly meetings and notices of events including our winter programme. You will also be able to attend our apiary inspections with Keith, our apiary manager, on Friday or Saturday mornings. If you decide not to continue we will take the £10 as a donation to branch funds, so we will be able to purchase more protective clothing for similar events in the future. You can upgrade this to full membership when you have bees of your own and have completed our Beginners’ Course.

The branch will be offering a full Beginners’ Course in September 2017, with further details to be confirmed nearer the time.

Most beekeepers will be familiar with someone (often a non-beekeeper) asking for help in identifying a bee that has been seen in their garden. The Bumblebee Conservation Trust has a lot of helpful information on their website on the differences between the various species of bumbles as compared to our honeybees. This page – http://bumblebeeconservation.org/about-bees/faqs/honeybees-vs-bumblebees/ – goes through some of the most obvious differences and is a useful place to recommend for information.

New Scientist is reporting today on some recent research undertaken in Australia on the way that honeybees can ‘drift’ from one hive to another – Migrant honeybees article. Any experienced and/or competent beekeeper could probably have provided similar information but the article is still an interesting one, with quite a lot of detail on what was found in the colonies there.